Word Wall and Environmental Print Linky Party

As a sub, one of the things that I consider a benefit, is getting to see all these different classrooms. There are some classrooms that make it feel like home because they are so warm and inviting. There are some similar things that I see in most classrooms, and one of those things is a word wall (or door or cabinet or shelves).

Several classrooms I'm in take their cabinet doors and turn them into word walls. Some take their storage doors and put the word wall there. And in one classroom, the bottom half of her wall is the word wall. I love that it is on kid level !

Another thing a lot of the teachers do is include their kiddos' names on the word wall. When writing stories about friends, they go up and look for their friends' names and they love it!

To make them last, most of the teachers laminate the letters on construction paper and add the words (also laminated) with a piece of tape on the back.

I also really like environmental print. I often have teachers have me ask kids to write about what they did on the weekend or the night before. And it seems like they've usually gone out to eat or go somewhere and then of course want me to spell it for them. That's where I love environmental print!

In this picture, you can see Subway and Safeway and Walmart. These are all stores in our town. The words in orange are math words, the words in green are science words. I'm not sure the difference between yellow and pink words. And you can also see the kids have their pictures with their name on the word wall. This teacher has it placed on a cabinet. The kids use it ALL the time. They take clipboards for word work and they hover over here. They love seeing themselves up there!

Examples of word walls:

This is from Ms. M's blog! I love how she alternated colors. She also put the words up by grade level and those word are color coded.